​I dare say it is because at heart I am unromantic and cynical, an all-round miserable sod, that my surname namesake, Henrietta Knight, has never really tickled my fancy. She was, and may prove to remain, a top-class trainer of steeplechasers and I admire and respect her allegiance to the sport. Yet I have never warmed to her, which is doubtless my loss, not her loss.
I do though warm to her as a writer of racing books and I particularly enjoyed ‘Starting From Scratch’ (Inspired To Be A Jump Jockey), which sits next to Terry Biddlecombe’s autobiography ‘Winner’s Disclosure’ on the bookshelf here. Her 2018 publication ‘The Jumping Game’ will also sit next to her late husband’s book, which will require displacing one other book and attempting to find room for it on another shelf as it is unthinkable for Henrietta’s two books not to stand either side of Terry’s book.
I have come late to ‘The Jumping Game’ and should have purchased it when it first came out. Why I erred, I cannot say. Sometimes important matters either pass me by or slip my memory. ‘The Jumping Game’ is an accompaniment to ‘Starting From Scratch’, with the theme of ‘How National Hunt Trainers Work and What Makes Them Tick’. As with most sporting books when as soon as they are published, they gradually become more and more out-of-date and reading ‘The Jumping Game five-years after publication is akin to reading a history book.
In 2018, for instance, Willie Mullins had not trained a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, whereas in 2024 he has bagged three, with a fourth most likely waiting on the horizon for him. Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson remain the top two trainers of National Hunt horses in Britain, with no one coming out of the pack to challenge their supremacy, though as he has done since 2018, Dan Skelton continues to strive to close the gap.
What Henrietta skilfully achieved in this book, is that though she is happy to give her opinion, she doesn’t directly challenge the training principles of the trainers she visited. For instance, she is a proponent of loose schooling horses, sending around a barn jumping without a rider on their backs. Other trainers do not loose school their horses, and yet every trainer she visited is equally successful if you take into account the differences in number or quality of the horses under their care.
She only mentions Best Mate five-times and her late husband Terry 7-times, which displayed great restraint. It would have been very easy to boast about her past achievements and compared herself to the trainers who consented to be interviewed for the book. It is obvious that she is greatly respected in the racing world and would be a vaunted visitor to any racing yard. What would be interesting, given she did give the slightest of hints in the book that she had not entirely ruled out returning to the training ranks, is how she might have changed her approach to training after inspecting all the different training surfaces, stable routines and thoughts of the participants who comprise the book.
Though she definitely has her own long-held opinions, augmented by the wisdom imparted by Terry during their partnership, she is a thoughtful woman and would not be slow to change tack if she considered improvement could be found in adopting someone else’s methods.
I thought the chapter on Peter Bowen was the most enlightening and that the two principles most top trainers adhere to are air-flow through stables and barns and turning horses out into paddocks during the day, both with the aim of horses getting as much clean air into their lungs as possible. What surprised me the most – Venetia Williams does not believe in grooming horses, which flies in the face of everything I have believed in and what all the great trainers of the past believed in and what is advocated in all the horse management books I have read. Grooming, I have always believed, stimulated the oils in the skin to produce a shiny coat. Apparently, though, it can make horses grumpy. We live and learn, and in this case, dispute. Not that I would dare challenge Venetia on the subject as I suspect she would eat me alive.

​I was intending to pen a letter to the Racing Post on the subject of abandonments when my thunder was stolen by Paul Kealy offering his criticism of the B.H.A.’s attitude towards abandoning whole meetings, when Ireland will reschedule at the earliest opportunity. He is 100% correct, as I told him in an e-mail. I am sure he was overjoyed and boastful to his colleagues that he received my approval. 
Although the odds on Ascot’s meeting this Saturday going ahead have improved with a weather forecast for above freezing temperatures from early morning onwards, it is still, I would think, shades of odds-on that the meeting will be adandoned.
The clash between Jonbon and El Fabiola has been widely anticipated for weeks yet if the big race is transferred to Cheltenham next weekend, as happened last season, the race will become the next best thing to a penalty kick for Jonbon as Willie Mullins has made clear that his horse will return home and be aimed at the Dublin Racing Festival. To be clear, without El Fabiola, the race will be a non-event, to the point that the race will not be worth I.T.V. altering their planned running order to televise the race live.
What is so stupid about scuttling the whole meeting and transferring the big race to Cheltenham next Saturday is that though the odds are against Ascot being fit to race tomorrow, the odds are greatly in favour of the racecourse being fit for purpose on Sunday. Not only that, I.T.V. will televising racing on Sunday from Lingfield, so television coverage will not be a problem. If Ireland have no problem promptly rescheduling meetings, why is it an imponderable in this country. Ascot will be all dressed-up ready to race on Saturday and yet it seems impossible to keep everything in place and merely delay proceedings for twenty-four hours.
During the months of December, January and February, would it not make sense for the ‘Premier’ meetings scheduled for a Saturday come with the provision of postponing until the Sunday if the weather should intervene? With the British weather, it is always a possibility the weather might be worse on the Sunday and racing will be skittled anyway but at least a provision to postpone for twenty-four hours increasing the odds of the meeting taking place.
Ascot might excuse abandoning the meeting rather than postponing on the grounds that catering staff may not be available or food prepared for the first day would be spoiled, creating extra expense. All eventualities, I would contend, would be easier to overcome than the whims and fancies of Mother Nature.
This is yet another example of poor leadership from the B.H.A. Horse Racing in this country is in desperate need of front-foot thinking.

Those who pine for the days of the 3-day Cheltenham Festival, who make fair comment on the over-stretching of the quality elastic band, with owners and trainers able to make choices as to which race their star horses run in, rather than the kettling of top-class horses into the Champion Hurdle, 2-mile Champion Chase or Cheltenham Gold Cup as was the case back ‘in the good old days’, seem perfectly happy with the National Hunt Chase, formerly the main race of the meeting (and the race the meeting is named after) stealing many of the top staying novices chasers from the 3-mile novice chase intended for the following season’s potential Gold Cup horses.
I used to like the ‘old’ National Hunt Chase, when it was run as a maiden chase or at least for novices that had not won before January 1st. It was a novelty, a race when virtually anything could happen and I wish Cheltenham would stage a similar race at their New Year’s Day meeting or Trials Day. But that’s fantasy thinking.
I don’t like the race anymore. It used to have 30-runners and yet now we are lucky if half-a-dozen face the starter. Amateur riders have the Kim Muir and the Foxhunters; there is no need at the sport’s premier race-meeting for there to be a third race restricted to amateurs. 
To improve the quality of the Festival I would upgrade the National Hunt Chase to a 4-mile Champion Chase, with novices receiving 7Ib from their more experienced rivals. As with the 2-mile Champion Chase, some years the pool of top-class stayers will be weak and in other years strong. 
The National Hunt season is built upon the foundation of long-distance chase. The premier race of the season is the Grand National, with the Welsh, Irish and Scottish Nationals major events on the calendar. Also, the season is peppered with regional nationals and races like the Warwick Classic. It is unreasonable for their not to be a Grade 1, 4-mile Champion Chase, with the Cheltenham Festival the obvious place to stage such a race.

​Loud mouth, unsuccessful football manager and leading asshole, Joey Barton, recently referred to two female football pundits as being like ‘Fred and Rose West’. If he had referred to two Muslims in a similar manner, he would doubtless be arrested for a hate crime. So how has he got away with blatant misogyny without a knock on his door from the police?
My heart sank when it came to my attention that jockey Neil Callan, his nose obviously put out of joint by an article in the Sunday Times by David Walsh on the on the abuse and bullying Bryony Frost was subjected to by horse racing’s very own Joey Barton, Robbie Dunne, went on social media to offer his opinion that it was nothing but a storm in a teacup which no one would have heard about if the victim was male. #saywhateveryoneelseis thinking.
Well, Neil, not everyone is thinking what you were thinking!
Callan withdrew his ‘tweet’ after being rapped over the knuckles by the Professional Jockeys Association, which put out a statement that they had protocols in place that jockeys were expected to abide by and that the association did not condone bullying or abuse by its members.
To my mind, this is not enough. The Frost/Dunne case was a sad indictment on the sport and cast horse racing in dark shadows. I am steadfast in my opinion that Dunne got off with too light a sentence. He should have been banned for life to give a clear message that jockeys earn their living in the 21st century, not the 19th. Honest opinion is one thing and I would defend Callan’s right to express himself freely. But there are lines in the sand and his opinion in this matter clearly puts out the message that he believes bullying, or the right of every senior jockey to lay down the law to younger or female colleagues as they see fit, is a perfectly valid position. It casts suspicion on him that he is capable of similar behaviour. If the B.H.A. are to crackdown on jockeys who believe misogyny and abusive behaviour are acceptable in the workplace, then they must, at the very least, order Callan to appear before them to explain himself. A ban, I believe, for bringing the sport into disrepute, would not be too harsh a penalty.
Let’s be clear: David Walsh was 100% correct in his assertion that ‘Racing had a treasure in Bryony Frost – and closed ranks to bury it.’ At a time when racing journalists are asking where are the jockeys to fill Frankie Dettori’s position as its leading marketing tool, the minions of the weighing room who collectively set about to silence Bryony, stole from the sport one of racing’s best marketing assets. 
Remember Francesca Cumani’s tears after hearing Bryony eloquently describe what winning the Ryanair Chase meant to her, how ‘Frodon grabbed her hand’ to instil his faith into her? Rachel Blackmore said she didn’t know how Bryony could express herself so clearly after a race as she herself struggled to fashion more than a few words together at the end of a race. Frodon, Bryony’s after-race eulogy, followed by Paisley Park’s emotional Stayers’ Hurdle win, was part of one of racing’s most glorious hours. That is what Robbie Dunne and the silent conspiracy of the weighing room have taken from the sport.
In effect, to a large extent, Bryony sacrificed her career to speak out, not only to achieve justice and peace from a bullying and abusive colleague, but to help those following in her wake. She is not only a wonderful horsewoman; she has made her mark on the history of the sport. Bryony was the first female jockey to win a Grade 1 at the Cheltenham Festival; she remains the only female to win the King George and she has ridden the most winners in National Hunt by a female jockey. Two days after the end of the B.H.A.’s inquiry against Dunne, she won the Tingle Creek at Sandown, where the crowd displayed their obvious support for her. She is a lost asset. That she continues in her professional is a tribute to her resolve and dedication.
Owners and trainers outside of the stables of Paul Nicholls and Lucy Wadham should look beyond their bias and employ her more often than presently is happening. The sport as a whole owes her plenty.

​What element or elements make a top-class horserace? Would a 4-horse Eclipse Stakes, for instance, be considered a better horse race than a 14-horse handicap at Newcastle on a Monday evening? ‘Black type’ is meant to infer a filly or mare is higher class than a filly or mare without black type against her name in the sales catalogue. But is that a title of truth or an obfuscation of the form-book? Does a strung-out field of 4 in a Group I constitute a more thrilling race to watch than five-horses in a 14-horse field flashing across the line in unison?
Too much of the flat racing season is organised to benefit breeders, at least in my opinion. If I had any sway with those who protect the European Pattern programme, I would lobby for listed races to be converted into limited handicaps and for only a limited number of Group 3 races in any one season in any one racing jurisdiction. Group 3 and listed races are very often uncompetitive, with the winner rarely coming off the bridle. If there were only 1 Group 3 over each of the distances per season in every country, Group 3’s would become highly competitive, with large fields and increased betting turnover.
I would also argue that half the Group 2’s should be eliminated from the season with the aim of boosting both the reputation of these races and the competitive nature of them. If trainers had nowhere else to go, races like the Eclipse would never fail to have plenty of runners. To accompany the announcement of Falbrav’s death in Japan, I.T.V. showed footage of him winning the Eclipse, beating a field that on quick observation numbered at least 14. We need to get back to those numbers, which in era of diminishing numbers of horses in training will only be achieved by culling a high percentage of rival Group races or at least distancing all similar races from each other throughout the season. Personally, going off tact for a moment, I would convert the Eclipse into the final classic of the season for 3-year-olds.
I would argue the same culling process should be applied to National Hunt’s Graded races. And why Group for flat and Grade for jumpers? Personally, I believe the Betfair Chase at Haydock is a spoiler when it comes to the early season programme. It has become an either or with the King George and it takes high-class chasers away from what is now the Coral Trophy at Newbury, though in my old head it remains the Hennessey. A Grade 1 that only ever attracts 4 or 5-runners each season is a hindrance to achieving competitive racing.
Just labelling a race a Group 1 or Grade 1 does not make it either top-class or indeed even a good, exciting race to watch. Making stallions should not be the overriding emphasis of the racing program. 

An excellent interview in the Racing Post with Charlotte Jones highlighted the ‘plight’ of lower league jockeys who possess the talent to be riding at a higher level but who are overlooked by trainers outside of the stables they are attached to. The point Charlotte made is that after riding five winners in a row, a treble and a double on consecutive days, she might have expected to have become busy with rides from other trainers, especially as she was still claiming 3lbs, an allowance she is 2-winners away from losing.
She is a talented rider; I have recognised her ability in the saddle for several seasons. Her problem is, to an extent, of her own making as she rides out 6-days a week for Jimmy Moffatt, the man responsible for every one of her winners so far, I believe. Her loyalty is crucial to her success. But would it not aid her career if one morning a week she rode out for a trainer with a larger number of horses at his or her command? The mountain rarely comes to Mohammed!
It is a similar plight with, I would contend, all female jockeys, and perhaps most male jockeys still claiming an allowance. Bryony Frost owes her career to Paul Nicholls, even though Lucy Wadham is equally responsible for her winners each season. She continues to ride out at Ditcheat, even though the claiming riders attached to the yard ride for Nicholls more often than she does, even if she gets on more of the better-class horses than they do.
Lily Pinchin, though she gets more outside rides than most of the top female National Hunt riders, is reliant of Charlie Longsdon for her career. Emma Smith Chaston gains the majority of her rides from Micky Hammond, the stable she is attached to. Tabitha Worsley, an excellent jockey who never gets on a half-decent prospect, gets more rides from more trainers than any other female jockey and I would suspect rides out regularly for most of the people to give her rides. Like most of their male weighing room colleagues, they are all journeyman jockeys in search of that one top-class horse. Bryony, of course, has found more than one top-class horse and yet continues to languish at the middle sphere of the jockeys table. But that is a tale of a completely different feather!
No one, including those destined to earn their wage in the heat and danger of sporting battle, comes into the world with a contract that promises them an equal shot at glory. Any one of the jockeys I have mentioned might win on any one of the top-class horses Rachel Blackmore is fortunate to be legged-up on but through hard work and talent she has had the luck to land in the right places at the right time and to have grasped every opportunity with both hands. The cream, against what we are led to believe, does not always rise to the top.

​Soon, sometime either at the end of January or the start of February, the initial entries for the Grand National will close and the day after they will be published in the Racing Post. For the majority of my life, I would scan the names of the entries with excitement at my heart. Many a time, a cold or drab winters’ day would be elevated by the names of a hundred or more horses who might, come early April, line-up for the greatest race in the world. This year, my interest will be no greater than first seeing the entries for the major races for the Cheltenham Festival.
We all know the names to expect in the list of possible runners for the Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle and other Grade 1 races. The entry of Stay Away Fay in the Gold Cup surprised me and A Plus Tard not being amongst the entries surprised me, yet everything else was as I expected to see. It will be the same with the Grand National entries in a few weeks. There might be a case of ‘I’m surprised to see that entered’ but all-in-all it will be a mixture of familiar names and those whose rating you know will not get them into the race. You know, the sound jumper, the dour stayer, the type of horse that in days gone by would be considered ‘National types’.
One of the consequences of raising the minimum rating for the race, aided and abetted by lowering the number of horses allowed to line-up, is to render the majority of the traditional trial races throughout the season rather pointless when it comes to the Grand National narrative. It is rather like turning all the classic trials on the flat into limited handicaps to make them more competitive to boost betting turnover. Even Aintree’s own Becher Chase is now irrelevant as a genuine trial for the Grand National. If the winner is rated lower than the necessary minimum required for entry it will be excluded from the ‘Grand National narrative’ even if it has winged around the course in the manner of a ‘true National prospect’.
Also, one of the consequences of continually upping the minimum rating for entry to the race is to render pointless the majority of races throughout the season traditionally considered to be Grand National trials. The Warwick Classic was building a reputation as one of the top ‘National’ trials of the season, yet on Saturday its name was not part of the ‘Grand National narrative’. The Eider was once upon a time considered a proper trial for Aintree, it is now been allowed to fall into the category of just another long-distance chase, on a par with the regional nationals that are now so populace in the racing calendar.
I fear the ‘Grand National narrative’ is being deliberately censored. I fear the race is being run-down in the manner of a frog that doesn’t know it’s being boiled alive as the temperature of the water is slowly but surely raised. I fear Aintree and the B.H.A. have a cunning plan to eventually do away with the race as it no longer fits the puzzle that is woke politics and societal reform.
At the moment, the Grand National is not so much a great sporting event as a cash-cow for Aintree, Jockey Club Holdings and the B.H.A. and is being overly protected to maintain profit, not to make it safe for posterity. 
For over sixty-years the Grand National has enthused me and given me the greatest pleasure of my life. In my racing library I have at least five books on the subject, with Reg Green’s ‘A Race Apart’ perhaps my most valued book. In my seventieth-year, I actual hope this year’s race is my personal last as I cannot bear to think my last few years will coincide with the eventual death of the race. I nearly cried when the race was lost to Covid and all that nonsense and I was furious when the race was voided due to the sport’s inability to get a horse race started in an orderly manner. Now, I am just saddened beyond words can fully articulate by what is being done to the race by those who should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder to protect its glorious heritage.

​I have little idea how racecourses set about finding sponsors. I dare say when one sponsor announces the end of its support for one the major races, the marketing division of a racecourse frantically sets about to find a replacement sponsor. I doubt, in these financially stringent times, sponsors are queuing up to sponsor horse racing, especially as we are not as woke as the lilywhites would want us to be.
In Britain, we rely heavily on bookmakers to put-up the majority of the prize-money for both the lesser and increasingly our top-flight races, both flat and National Hunt. In Ireland, I notice, local companies are more frequently seen with their names associated with races, with anyone from engineering companies, local hotels and pubs, to local oil companies, stepping-up to the plate, than similar small businesses in this country. Perhaps Irish racecourses remain more closely allied to its local communities than over here.
I suggest the marketing division of racecourses should remind potential backers of the sport of the power of sponsorship. The long-distance handicap chase run at Sandown on the last day of the National Hunt season remains to this day in the memory of racing people as ‘The Whitbread’, even though the brewery withdrew its sponsorship a very long time ago. The handicap chase at Newbury run in November, now run as the Coral Trophy (?) is still referred to many racing people as the ‘old Hennessey’, the instigators of the race back in the late 1950’s.
On this day in 1987, followers of National Hunt racing were disappointed when Schweppes announced they would no longer sponsor the hurdle race at Newbury known as the Schweppes Gold Trophy. Thirty-seven-years later the 2-mile handicap hurdle, now sponsored by Betfair, remains entrenched in racing’s consciousness as ‘the Schweppes’.
The popularity of National Hunt is due to companies like Whitbread, Hennessey and Schweppes seeing horse racing sponsorship as good business-sense and perhaps value for money. Until Bill Whitbread sponsored the race at Sandown, flat racing for hundreds of years far out-sung the winter game and was considered far more popular with the racing public. National Hunt, apart from the Grand National and from the sixties onwards the Cheltenham Festival, only existed to fill the cold and snowy void between November and March.
The Schweppes Gold Trophy began in 1963, at Aintree. It’s history was shorter than either the Whitbread and the Hennessey, ending in 1987, though I suspect its impact was just as significant as hurdle racing was at the time only a stepping stone to horses jumping fences and carried far less esteem with the public. The Schweppes changed all that and attracted some of the best hurdlers of the age, including its best winner, Persian War.
Well-handicapped horses could take the prize, too and in all its guises it has remained one of the most competitive races in the calendar. In 1982, and for all younger enthusiasts who think Ruby Walsh has no peers, or Richard Dunwoody or A.P. McCoy, this is a race that should be not only watched but studied. John Francome put up 4Ibs overweight (wouldn’t be countenanced today by modern trainers) on the free-going Donegal Prince. Anyone who list their top-three National Jockeys and does not include John Francome needs to have their brains washed. The horse fought for his head, was taken on and passed several times, never looked like the winner after the last as David Goulding brought Ekbalco with a perfectly-timed run and yet Francome, defying Peter O’Sullevan’s race-call, got back up on the line to win. A tour-de-force of a ride, deserving of a great race.
Has Newbury asked whoever now owns the Schweppes brand to return as sponsors? Has it been mentioned to them of the power of sponsorship; that 40-years since they ended their commercial sponsorship of the race, the name Schweppes remains associated with the race? Schweppes not only had their name in the race title, they also produced calendars that hung in pubs, betting shops and elsewhere for twelve-months of the year but also owned a couple of racehorses bearing their name. It would be too much to ask for a similar commitment to the sport but they might be arm-twisted by flattery and marketing persuasion to return as sponsors when Betfair decide to put their money elsewhere. Perhaps.
Of course, last year would have been 60th anniversary of the race. That would have been the year for the return of Schweppes. But, still, I would love to have Schweppes return as sponsors of the iconic handicap hurdle, the race that made handicap hurdles cool.
One final point on this subject. This does not apply to Whitbread, Hennessey or the Schweppes sponsorship as their races did not exist until they were inaugurated under their company names. But as soon as a sponsor announces it will no longer sponsor a race that has always bore its name and until a new sponsor is found, the race no longer exists as it has no name. Since originally voicing my ire on this subject, races are now given registered names, though that ‘official’ name is never referenced in the race title. In the U.S. a race might be the ‘Highlight Stakes’ (made it up as U.S. racing does not float my boat) brought to you by ….. add in sponsor’s name. So why not the Grand National brought to you by Randox Health? The Newbury Handicap Hurdle brought to you by Betfair. Or the XXX handicap hurdle brought to you by Local Engineering, for all your (listing what is the core product of the company)?

​I dislike the word ‘premierisation’ and have taken the unilateral decision to replace it with the term ‘premier racing’. ‘Premierisation’ suggests separation crossed with improvement and as my fear of the smaller racecourses being classed as ‘lesser beings’ is yet to prove founded in fact and horse racing in its entirety is still as far from being turned into a winning machine as it was on December 31st, I shall decline to use ‘premierisation’ as if it is the small m messiah the sport in this country has cried out for, for as long as my fading memory allows.
Since Peter Saville came into the open with his plan to save racing’s future, and certainly on the day the B.H.A. announced the 2-year trial of the concept, my thoughts have swung between hating the idea and thinking it might be the first steps along the right road. As with all B.H.A. directives, it hasn’t started very well, with few runners at the inaugural ‘Premier racing day at Cheltenham and the abandonment of due to the vagaries of the British winter weather. 
To my mind, the concept of premier racing would have been given a more coherent start if it had been delayed to March and applied only to race-meetings where genuine premier races are held. With all due respect to salt of the earth Plumpton, the meeting yesterday, albeit with greater prize-money than in years previously, did not attract a single horse of premier standard. In truth, it was standard Plumpton fare semi-pumped-up to be something it wasn’t, premier. With the possible exception of Cheltenham’s trials day and Newbury’s big meeting in February (Denman, Game Spirit, the handicap hurdle), there is no meeting between now and the Festival which might termed premier fare. There will plenty of good, honest racing on practically every Saturday that winter allows to be staged, of course, but I would argue that the word ‘premier’ should not be attached to meetings and races that fail to attract the very best in the sport.
I am now of the opinion that all the B.H.A. are doing with premier racing is plumping pillows to make the drawing room look smarter to the eye than it actually is in reality. Premier racing will not, even though benefits might come from it, mask ordinariness or the need for that ordinariness to be funded so that the bottom of the pyramid is maintained to allow it to prop-up the higher echelons of the sport. Healthy plants have a healthy root system, never forget.
Associating horse racing with other sports and trying to define a golden highway to a similar funding stream and status is sheer folly. The Premier League has only 20 participants, with a wide gulf between the top half-dozen and the rest. Football is also a sport played and watched in practically every country around the world. While flat racing takes place on every non-frozen continent to one extent or another, National Hunt racing only has three strongholds, Britain, Ireland and France.
I have come to the conclusion that while the concept of premier racing has potential, the scope it has been given is too broad, with too much wishful thinking attached. The genuine premier races and meeting should be given a boost in prize-money to keep them on a par with similar races and meetings in countries funded far more sensibly than in Britain or Ireland and with budgets that will allow for promotion and marketing to get the word out to not only the sporting public but the world at large. Horse racing should be seen by the public as a good day out for all the family. We will only get youngsters through the gate in hand with their parents.
Instead of throwing the kitchen sink at the problem of getting bums on seats, a more directed approach, at least in the first year, would prove more effective, I believe. Big-up the big meetings, the premier days of the sport. Have the vision to attract 100,000 to Epsom on Derby Day and promote it as the ‘peoples’ day out’, with no or less emphasis on it being a ‘toffs benefit do’.
Let me give the example of Newcastle’s Northumberland Plate. I hope Newcastle on the day is to be given premier status. Yet in truth the only race of the entire meeting worthy of the badge of honour is the Plate. On the day, instead of this nonsense ‘golden exclusion zone’, with only two Premier race-meetings and one other allowed, with all other meetings starting either mid-morning or early evening, why not a race-meeting wide hiatus for an hour so the racing and sporting public can focus solely on the Plate? Have the ambition to grow the Plate into a British version of the Melbourne Cup.
To my mind, money will be wasted over the next two-years in an attempt to persuade the public that races and meetings are premier quality when in fact they are second or third division fare. This Saturday we have the Warwick Classic, a long-distance chase of dubious quality, with little hope of a single runner that might fight a good fight in a genuine premier race. In itself, the Warwick Classic is fine race and deserves its place as the main race of the day. But it is not a premier race and no amount of money spent in prize-money or marketing will make it so and I cannot see punters lumping greater amounts of money on the race than they normally might do simply on the basis the B.H.A. have tagged the day a premier day.
There are genuine premier days in British racing, we all know the names of the races and the racecourses where they are traditionally held, and that is where the focus should be during the two-years of this cross-your-fingers trial. Luton versus Burnley is not a premier game in the Premiership, whereas Manchester City versus Liverpool is a premier day.

​I believe, with one notable exception, that the problems presently besetting horse racing in Britain at present can be traced back to the day a High Court judge came to the conclusion that the owners of racecourses were disadvantaged by not being able to race when it suited them and from that moment the B.H.A. lost control of the sport. In the past, the sport’s governing body, ruled the roost, telling racecourses when they could race and which type of races they should provide.
Sensible racing people advocate for less racing, whereas the owners of racecourses want to saturate the racing calendar with more and more fixtures. At least that was the case; they have been reined in over the last few years, although Chelmsford is proposing litigation against the B.H.A. if they are not given more race-meetings. In the next year or so the new turf course at Chelmsford comes into action and quite rightly they want additional fixtures rather than having to use fixtures presently allocated to them for all-weather racing.
If we didn’t have all-weather racing or summer jumping, of course, the problem of too many fixtures for too few racehorses would not be the stranglehold that it is. All-weather racing, to my mind, is an evil necessity and I would like to separate all-weather racing, and summer jumping, from turf fixtures.
To first deal with summer jumping as that is far less of an obstacle to be overcome than all-weather racing. I have come to the conclusion that summer jumping should have a designated start and stop date, with a gap of a few weeks either side of the end of the ‘proper’ season and the beginning of the next, with winners in the designated period not included in title races for champion jockey, trainer, owner, etc,. Instead, we should have a summer champion jockey, trainer, owner, etc. I would also like to see fixtures given an environmental slant, with race-meetings in the north and Scotland one week, with two and three-day fixtures to create ‘festivals’ as is done so successfully in Ireland, with the same happening in the south, midlands and the west of the country. Wouldn’t it save on travelling expenses if jockeys and trainers did not have to drive to three or four different racecourses a week but located themselves in one part of the country for the duration of the race-meetings in that part of the country?
I suggest summer all-weather racing should also be excluded from the title race for champion jockey, trainer, etc. The greatest gain from such a radical change would be less incentive for the top jockeys to ride every day of the week, allowing those jockeys further down the food chain to have greater opportunities. Again, once the flat turf season is under way, all-weather racing would have its own summer championships; spreading the glory, as it were.
All-weather flat racing is less of an evil necessity to my mind as it regularly saves the day when winter weather claims National Hunt fixtures. Already it has its own title races, though the victors rarely receive the same acclaim for their hard endeavours throughout the worst of the British weather as, for example, the champion jockey on the turf.
Sidenote: Rossa Ryan rode over 200-winners in 2023, more than any other jockey, including William Buick, yet received no award, no acclaim. 
There is, at this moment in our history when the number of racehorses in training is in sharp decline, too many fixtures. It is unarguable, even when an increase in prize-money is linked to racecourse payments for media rights. It is a no-brainer, as proved when the weather takes it toll on the fixture-list, that too many race-meetings equates to small field sizes and less betting turnover.
‘Premierizing’ the sport may achieve champagne fountains of success. Yet it flies in the face of common-sense when the B.H.A. allow other race-meetings on the major days of the sport – the Derby, Grand National, Royal Ascot, Cheltenham Gold Cup, to name but a few – when their aim is to emphasise and herald to the sporting public the jewels of racing’s crown.
Separate the flat and National Hunt turf seasons from the lesser all-weather and summer jumping divisions and grow the sport from the bottom up, not from the exclusivity of the elite down. Sadly, I doubt if the sport has the luxury of time to get its house in order. In two-years, I fear, the length of the ‘premierisation trial’, we might all come to realise the fate of horse racing in this country.

​I have on my desk, in need of being replaced by an up-to-date edition, is a copy of 2018 ‘Horses In Training’. So many good, bad and ugly things have happened to horse racing in this country since 2018 but a constant source of pride and joy has been Frodon. There he is listed as a 6-year-old in Paul Nicholl’s squad for the 2018 season and also on the list is Pacha Du Polder, by then an 11-year-old, the horse that first brought Miss Bryony Frost, as she was then, to prominence when winning the Foxhunters at the Cheltenham Festival. 
I stand to be corrected but of the 156 horses listed under Paul Nicholl’s name in 2018, Frodon, Dolos, Enrilo and Greanateen are the only ones to still be stabled at Ditcheat in 2024, though a good many are still racing for other trainers.
It is to be doubted when Frodon first arrived from France that Paul Nicholls’ had great expectations of him and I would put a tenner on Nicholl’s not believing he would still be living at Ditcheat all these years later. He arrived not as a six-year-old but two-years earlier, so he has lived and earned his keep at Ditcheat for going-on 9-years.
He cannot, as much as I have grown to love him – I nearly voted for him in the Racing Post’s dubious ‘Greatest Racehorses Poll, deciding in the end to go with my first love, Spanish Steps – to be regarded in the same breath as Kauto Star, Denman, Big Bucks or several other true greats of National Hunt racing who raced under the Paul Nicholls’ banner. He ploughed his own furrow, though, shining bright during a slow period in the career of his maestro trainer. Kauto and Denman in particular were always destined for top honours and though they won handicaps, they were always a grade or two above the rank and file. Frodon came from a lesser parish. He toiled in handicaps from the start, working his way through the grades until he was winning December Gold Cups and other top-level middle-distance handicaps. That, I am sure, is where Paul Nicholls’ thought his rise through the ranks would end. Of course, Frodon never doubted his own ability.
He retires with 19-victories, which for the modern era is remarkable. His win in the Ryanair remains my favourite of his big race successes, though in the record books it will be eclipsed by his King George success when he had his better-rated stable-mates Clan Des Obeaux and Cyrname toiling in his wake. His third Grade 1 was achieved at Down Royal when his exuberant jumping didn’t win the day and he had to rely on courage and determination not to be headed.
John Francome named him the best jumper of a fence he had ever seen and I can’t remember, at least with Bryony, him ever making a mistake of any kind. I have said that anyone of the belief that racing people make horses race against their will should be placed in front of a film of Frodon running in any of the 50-odd races he competed in and point to evidence for their belief. He loved racing and most of all he loved jumping fences, hence when they took out half the fences in the Old Roan Chase at Aintree, as Bryony said, he became confused and disinterested.
It will not be lost on Bryony that Frodon is the last of horses in the yard that we all considered were her mounts, horses that Harry Cobden had no rights to. Present Man was her ride, so was Secret Investor and Yala Enki, and it must be remembered she won a Tingle Creek on Greanateen. I hope she keeps the ride on Il Ridoto after her performance at Cheltenham recently on him and for the benefit of the sport I hope other horses emerge to help keep her name in the spotlight.
My hope for 2024, and will be on-going for the years ahead, is that Frodon out-lives me and enjoys a happy and useful life, continuing to bring joy to Bryony’s life and to the lives of her family. 

​One of the saddest and most alarming spectacles on a racecourse is ‘the tired fall’. When all is to play for at the sharp end of a race, the tired fall is somehow allowable, as the sport is, as we know, for connections and punters, at least, all about being first past the post. The sight, though, that is both disagreeable to the eye of the enthusiast and grist to the mill of those who believe horse racing to be an unsavoury experience, is the fall of a horse ‘out on its feet’ and with no chance of winning or being placed, with the subsequent holding of breath until the horse rises to his feet. The jockey, of course, we care less about it, even when he remains underneath half a ton of unmoving horse!
Back in the day, the Chair Fence at Aintree was manned by a racecourse official who was known as the Distance Judge and assisted the Racecourse Judge. He would sit on a chair mounted on a plinth and direct jockeys, who were still racing when the previous finisher had passed the finishing post, to pull-up as their mounts as they would be deemed non-finishers and recorded as being beaten by a ‘distance’.
Of course, jockeys do not set-out to get their horse on the ground during a race, sometimes, though, misjudgements occur and horses do fall, sometimes fatally, while on other occasions they remain on the ground winded, with the green canvas screens erected so vets can administer to the horse in private whilst shielding the public from the sight of a stricken horse. As was proved during the Welsh National at Chepstow over the Christmas period, jockeys tend to err on the side of caution when all hope of prize-winning is gone these days and will pull up their mounts earlier in a race than perhaps their forebears might have done in the past. It is always better to pull-up one fence too early than one fence too late.
How it might be achieved without jockeys wearing some form of communication device is difficult to suggest from someone with no race-riding experience, but the return of the ‘distance judge’ in some form might be worth discussion at B.H.A. headquarters.
If a horse is a distant third as the winner passes the winning post, and another a distant fourth, for example, would it not be expedient, to take away the possibility of a crashing fall, for the jockey to be instructed to pull-up and the owner awarded third or fourth prize-money, with bookmakers paying out as if the horse had jumped the final obstacle (or final two fences) as if it is a finisher?
Horse racing is only similar to athletics in that there is a start and a finish. In athletics, for the athletes, it is a sport about ‘personal bests’, with an athlete often stepping off the track having finished 12th smiling as broadly as the winner due to having broken his or her personal best time for the event. Horse racing is not about personal bests or track records. There is no shame in not finishing the race, though there may be disappointment and sometimes tears.
The sport must do all in its powers to eliminate, as far as fate will allow, the unnecessary and preventable falls. Some form of ‘distance judge’ might go some way to achieving fewer green screens utilized on the racecourse.

As others have stated, Galopin Des Champs was spectacular in the Savills Chase and looks to have a second Gold Cup in his grasp. Of course, Cheltenham in March is a different ball-game to Leopardstown at Christmas. For the sake of a competitive race come March, it is to be hoped Gordon Elliott finds something amiss with Gerri Colombe and that A Plus Tard comes on leaps and bounds for his first run of the season and only his third in two-seasons. Shishkin, thankfully, has survived his unfortunate trip-up in the King George and he might yet surprise and shock the connections of Galopin Des Champs come March.
What is worrying for the opposition, must be that while Galopin looked vulnerable when held-up in his races, at least to my eyes he looked to have a fall in him, reverting back to allowing him to bowl along, he looks imperious and immaculate over his fences. To beat him, others must lay up with him as he will not be going backwards in the closing stages. Can Hewick stay with him? Has Shishkin the stamina to lay a glove on him up the stamina-sapping hill to the finishing line? Will Fastorslow prove too too fast for Galopin or too slow?
What the Christmas period has proved is that if the racing schedule is amended and tweaked positive outcomes can be achieved. God-willing, this season Galopin might be seen on a racecourse three-times before Cheltenham rather than twice as it was last season and Nicky Henderson is persuaded that it is possible for Constitution Hill to have three-races in the run-up to the Champion Hurdle, though due to a combination of frost and heavy ground, this season he’ll have to win a second Champion Hurdle off a preparation of only two runs, as it was last season. Further tweaks are needed and it might aid the B.H.A. if they consulted trainers as to how those tweaks might provide the greatest amount of benefit.